


What might have been

by Ardatli



Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: AU sort of, Canon Divergence, Light Angst, M/M, Nate has Issues, Regency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6887131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Had I my druthers,” Charles joked, his smile kind and his eyes fond, “I’d fold you into my trunk and steal you back to sea with me when next I go. But alas; you’ve resigned your commission. And,” he said, as though he had actually considered the point, “you would make a terrible cabin boy.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	What might have been

**Author's Note:**

> First post of mine for fic based around The London Life, a regency-era forum-based role playing game. Nate is my character, a retired naval officer, and Charlie (Charles at that point) is his lover. 
> 
> I wrote this at a point in the game where Charlie's first player had left and he hadn't yet been picked up again. There was a half-finished email thread started between myself and Charlie's old player, and a gap between threads that needed to be filled. I pulled some pieces from that old thread, and wrapped the rest of the scene around it. 
> 
> We've since acquired a new player for Charlie and he's become a lot less serious, which frankly, is all for the better. When I post more Nate / Charlie stuff up here, that's why there's the difference in tone. 
> 
> Technically let's call this a canon divergence AU, since Charlie is a bit out of character here based on who he's become.
> 
> Based on characters from http://www.thelondonliferpg.com/

The hour was late and the house still by the time Nate returned, Charles in tow.

“Come up?” Nate offered, the words hardly necessary, though he was more in a mood for conversation than for anything else tonight. “I’ve a good brandy open, and I’m not ready to face the sheets just yet.”

Charles snickered softly, and his eyes gleamed with the jokes he wouldn’t make aloud – not in the hallway, at any rate. “Gladly,” was all he said, mounting the staircase behind Nate.

Avoid the third step; it creaked. Up the side of the remaining stairs so as to muffle their footsteps... it were as though he was a boy again, sneaking in to avoid his father’s wrath. Old habits.

The lamp was full and Nate lit it, waving Charles over toward his usual seat by the chess board near the window. Charles didn’t move, lingering by the desk instead. “You’re in no mood to play tonight,” he observed, his eyes on Nate. Nate started to shrug off his coat, the heavy wool confining and over-warm now that they were inside, and Charles moved without hesitation to take it by the collar and slide it easily from his shoulders.

“I should keep you on as an extra valet,” Nate teased him by way of thanks. He turned his head, just a fraction. Just enough to nudge his cheek against the back of Charles’ hand. It was a momentary thing, would appear accidental if it were even marked. The pressure of Charles’ knuckle against the line of his jaw was no accident, though, however fleeting.

Charles stepped away, tossed Nate’s jacket casually over the back of his chair. He seated himself, and accepted the glass that Nate extended to him with a nod of thanks. Nate joined him in the chair opposite, his gaze caught first by the chess board, a game half-played left abandoned. “I’m not,” he admitted, answering Charles’ earlier question. Some of the tension in the room dissolved with his admission, and he swirled the brandy in his glass for something to do with his hands. “My mind is elsewhere.”

“Your arm troubling you?” Charles raised an eyebrow, his glance following his question.

“Off and on,” Nate shrugged lopsidedly. “No more so than usual.”

“Hawksley, then,” Charles smirked, but there was no unkindness in it. “You liked him,” he suggested, and brought his glass to his lips.

Nate made a face. “I think not,” he objected. Then, “I do not dislike him, but I hardly imagine we have much in common.” And there was the rub, wasn’t it? That in and of itself was exactly the problem. “He’s entirely too stuffy to be borne,” Nate suggested, trying to steer the conversation away from oppressive things. “You know who he reminds me of?”

“Sutton,” Charles replied, without pause to consider, and then he did smile. “The most over-starched, tight-buttoned puritan among puritans. How that man ever decided to go to sea among the rest of us ill-bred ruffians is a mystery that never shall be solved.”

“But he is what they want,” Nate replied morosely. “Both of them. Sutton is an Admiral and Hawksley every inch the proper peer.” He stared into the amber of his drink, the lamplight giving it a golden glow. “The Viscount is the example of everything that I am now expected to make myself over into. And I’ve no earthly idea where to begin.”

“And there we have it,” Charles murmured quietly, ever-perceptive. “You’ve entirely too much intelligence – too much soul – to be that sort of man. “Nathaniel,” he glanced at the door, guilt-stricken for a moment at the unintentional intimacy, then relaxed when no avenging angel appeared out of the darkness. “You’re a sailor at heart. And a damned good one.”

Nate shook his head. “I’m not that any longer,” he reminded Charles, raising his left arm until the pain took him and he let his hand fall clumsily into his lap. “What would you have me do?” he asked bitterly. As much as he had protested to Dot, Nelson had been an admiral and things like hauling on lines were well beneath him. Not an option available to Nate.

“Had I my druthers,” Charles joked, his smile kind and his eyes fond, “I’d fold you into my trunk and steal you back to sea with me when next I go. But alas; you’ve resigned your commission. And,” he said, as though he had actually considered the point, “you would make a terrible cabin boy.”

He wanted to laugh, managed a small, grim chuckle instead. “I’ll make a terrible Baron as well,” Nate confessed. “I am a man out of sorts with the world.”

Charles set his glass down and reached across the divide between them. He rested his fingertips against Nate’s knee, the pressure a grounding force that he could cling to. “Come,” Charles’ voice was soft, his gaze searching. “As you love me, unburden yourself.”

And there was _his_ Charles, the one so few ever saw, compassionate and kind, his affection a balm to the soul. Nate did not deserve his friendship; not half as well as he should.

Nate let the air out of his lungs and slumped back against his chair. Charles sat back as well, and Nate felt the loss of his touch keenly. He turned the cut crystal glass in his hand, the lamplight reflecting off a hundred different facets, each in turn.

“I was never supposed to be here,” he began simply, trying to order his thoughts. “I prepared for a life at sea, studied maths and navigation, tactics and supply lines- not [i]Parliament[/i] and management of estates. My father was supposed to have a long and illustrious life, and when he died, my mother and Edward to carry on managing things in my absence. Then, someday far in the future, when my adventuring was done, I would retire, marry-“

Charles snorted a laugh, and Nate rolled his eyes affectionately. “-[i]Marry[/i], return to home and hearth and begin my slow slide into uselessness and senility.”

“Only now...” Charles prompted, when Nate fell silent.

“Only now it has been forced upon me and I am not yet ready to face my fate,” Nate admitted simply. The pangs of longing dug sharp nails into his chest. “There are so many things we’ve not yet done,” he said, not noticing his slip. “So many adventures we’ve not yet had.”

“We have had some glorious ones,” Charles reminded him, and knocked his toe against Nate’s crossed knee as they sat. “Bayonne, for instance,” he said archly.

“Good god, man,” Nate laughed at the memory, his cheeks suddenly hot, and not from the brandy. Blue silk, and the bright gleam of swords in the lamplight, Charles’ hands new and rough on his body - “What was her name again?”

“You mean you don’t remember darling Séraphine?” Charles was mocking him now, his dark eyes alight with laughter. “After all that?”

“I’m more surprised that you do,” Nate riposted, and yes, this, [i]this[/i] was how it should always be, an evening with a dear friend, laughter and brandy and that feeling of simpatico that could only come from long companionship between two like minds.

Charles laughed, and drank. “I always try to remember the names of the girls I took a sword wound for,” he pointed out, gesturing with his glass.

The memories came thick and fast at that, flashes of images and sounds, the scent of calla lilies and Séraphine’s body beneath him, warm and plump and oh-so-willing-

\- Charles bursting in, calling out a warning; the enraged Spaniard following half a minute later (father, brother, husband, pimp? Nate had never actually learned that answer.)-

\- The wildness of the fight, Charles interposing himself between them, wild with laughter and the battle-rush, Nate with his sword in one hand and his breeches in the other-

\- Blood soaking bright into Charles’ breeches as they made their escape, the blue silk of Séraphine’s scarf soft in Nate’s hands as he’d bound it about Charles’ naked thigh back in their bare little room, a tremble in his hands-

            - fingers under his chin and a swift press of lips to his, fiercer, stronger than the girl’s, and so very welcome-

It had not been the first time either of them had lain with another man, but (for Nate, at least) it had been the time that meant the most. It had been the beginning.

“There will be many more Séraphines for you,” Nate said, back in the present, in his study, brandy slowly warming in the tumbler in his hand. “And adventures. While I will rot here, among the women’s skirts.”

Charles frowned at him. There was judgement there, for the first time, and Nate felt a flash of shame. “You make this more dire than it has to be,” Charles pointed out, gesturing with his glass. “How many men that we sailed with would kill – have died – for what you have here and now? Alive to see retirement, youth and beauty enough to enjoy it still. Wealth to make the rest of your days easy and bright. All that’s left is to find some pretty little songbird to warm your bed.” His tone did change at that, grew cold and mocking.

“Don’t,” Nate warned sharply, when he felt more like begging. “It doesn’t become you.”

“Why can you not try to find the good in it?” Charles responded instead of an apology.

“Because I am trapped here, always knowing that other men are out where I should be, doing the work that I could not.” He kept his voice low, conscious of the lateness of the hour. The last thing he wanted to do now was rouse the house.

Charles tapped his finger against the glass, and Nate’s eyes were drawn to the movement and the motion. “So do it here,” Charles suggested. “Place yourself before the Admiralty and ask them for some occupation. There are always changes to be made, efficiencies of the sort we used to dream about on the quarterdeck at nights-“

“Sail myself a desk?” And that had more resonance than just this conversation, the knowledge of Charles’ similar offer hanging above them both. “Would you be happy with a life like that?”

There was a pause, pregnant and lingering. “I don’t know,” Charles said finally, holding Nate’s gaze with his own. “It would all depend on what my other choices were.” He drained his glass and set it down, leaned forward one more time with his elbow upon the armrest.

“We cannot spend our lives dreaming of the greatest possible worlds,” he said, and his voice was tinged with regret, layers upon layers of meaning behind their locked gazes and his every word and intonation. “Men such as you and I, we make the best of what is in front of us. We keep moving forward, never looking back, else like the shark, we die.”

Breath caught in Nate’s throat. “Never looking back?” he asked, unwilling to hear the answer.

“You will ever be beside me.” Charles shook his head as though to dispel his terrible imaginings. “Even the hell that was Grand Port could not divide us; what makes you think anything else has that power?” His voice was sure but his eyes suggested otherwise; Nate refused to think about what lay behind that uncertainty. He smiled, instead of speaking.

Charles rose from his seat and straightened his coat with care. “The hour is late,” he said after a moment. “And I am due elsewhere in the morning. Will I see you later this week?”

Nate nodded, but he didn’t rise. He was tired and his shoulder ached, and Charles had never demanded that he stand on ceremony. “Of course.”

Charles brushed Nate’s shoulder gently with the edge of his hand as he passed, trailed his fingertips lightly over the silk of Nate’s waistcoat. The touch burned through the clothes and into Nate’s skin; his heat was everything.

Nate turned his cheek and brushed his jaw against Charles’ knuckle.

He slipped out the door and with a clatter of boots down the stairs, he was gone. There were voices from below; Lawrence had met him in the downstairs hall. “...shall I have one of the girls make up a room again, sir?”

“No, thank you, Brookseley. I’m just leaving. I’ll see myself out.”

“Good evening, Commander.”

The door below clicked, and the house was silent again. Nate tipped his head back against the chair and examined the ceiling. Fascinating things, ceilings. But white paint could only distract a man from his thoughts, particularly melancholy ones, for so long.


End file.
